RE: Wear A Blue Collar On A College Campus

If someone tells you that you have a "blue collar work ethic," then you should take it as the compliment that it is. In my family, I have family members who lived out that compliment and continue to live it out. My grandfather worked hard and dangerous jobs clearing right-of-way for oil and gas pipelines through Louisiana swamps and over Wyoming mountains. It took a back injury to finally keep him from working. He said he never asked his men to do a job that he wouldn't do himself. My father works all kinds of shifts at a papermill and is always there when he is expected to be there. If that means after a short turn around, Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year's Day, well, the job has to be done, and he is at that job rain or shine. "A good worker" is a high compliment in my family. And though I didn't run a chainsaw or work on paper machines while at college, I did bring the family dedication to the task at hand and completed my degree in four years and graduated summa cum laude. If a paper was due on a certain day, I didn't start looking for excuses to turn it in late. I got the paper written and turned in. If I felt bad while I wrote, well, I felt bad, but I still wrote the paper. If the class started at 8:30, I was there not at 8:45, but when class started, just as my father is on time for his job no matter if it is days, evenings, or the graveyard shift. All this to say, that the sense of dedication, not easily giving up on a task, the sense of pride in one's work, the sense of responsibility to do the right and honest thing by your co-workers, that I associate with the blue collar work ethic are all good things to have in helping you get a college degree and entrance into the world of the white collar workplace. If you are interested in reading about that transition, from a blue collar world to a white collar world, I couldn't recommend a better book than Alfred Lubrano's "LIMBO: BLUE COLLAR ROOTS, WHITE COLLAR DREAMS." I know I felt less alone in having read it and gained a better understanding of myself.